


Half Rations

by Lokei



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Gen, Jealousy, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-10
Updated: 2006-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Issues of rank and personal jealousy burn hotter when your belly’s empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half Rations

He stared over the gunwale, gripping the wood until his knuckles turned white, daring his clenched fingertips to bleed like his shipmate’s gums, wishing he could stain the gleaming ship’s trim with scarlet so that all would know what had happened here. There was a murmur not far behind him and he turned and caught them staring at him, Matthews and that captain’s favorite, Acting Lieutenant Hornblower.

He turned away, refusing the understanding in Matthews’ eyes, jealous of his status as chief mourner. After all, it had been bought by his long friendship with Finch and paid for with more than a week’s wages. Neither Matthews’ many small kindnesses nor Hornblower’s vigils in the sickbay entitled them to share his loss, his righteous anger at a needless death.

His stomach churned at the thought of sharing anything with Hornblower in particular. Hornblower, who had turned up at Finch’s deathbed with a loaf of bread, an hour too late. Hornblower, an officer and the captain’s sodding pet, who did not seem to be suffering from half-rations at all. Hornblower, who in all life’s rationing of luck and looks and everything else, seemed to always receive a double portion.

It burned in Bunting’s gullet worse than the hunger pains of half-rations, eating away at him from the inside like rats gnawing through the ship’s hull. It drove him through his duties and pricked him in the night, this overwhelming feeling he called ‘injustice.’

In the orlop of his conscience, he knew it was something else, something more personal and more bitter, but if he could avoid it, he never ventured there. He never named the emotion which roiled his guts at the smells drifting from the officers’ wardroom, at the sounds of genteel laughter from the captain’s cabin, at the sight of Hornblower’s lean profile balanced with surprising grace against the pitch and heave of the deck.

Somehow, Hornblower triggered it, worse than anyone—his easy smiles for the men like Matthews and Stiles, his seemingly nonchalant acceptance of the reverence with which they treated him—how was that fair? Just because he was an officer, they doffed their caps and tugged their forelocks, when men like Matthews and even Bunting himself had more experience, Matthews more than twice as much.

Bunting felt his lips curl into a snarl as he thought of it, and his eyes narrowed even further than their usual squint. Catching sight of his distorted reflection in the hourglass as he passed by the wheel, he scowled further. He knew he had received a half-ration in looks—his own mother had told him as a boy that he looked “like a jar the potter’d dropped” which was the kindest of the ways she had expressed her disappointment in him. Naturally asymmetric, the lumpen effect was worsened by the perpetual expression of discontent on his features, which only deepened when he compared himself to men like Hornblower or the Captain, with their large keen eyes and countenances which men trusted. Bunting’s face made him always suspect, and again the injustice writhed across his expression as he caught the officer of the watch glancing at him sharply.

He swung himself below decks and pretended not to notice that conversation died when he reached the mess table, crammed between the cannons so that the men were hemmed in by symbols of naval power and authority. He kicked at one of the guns in passing and threw himself into his seat, face flaming as a look passed around the rest of the mess. Bloody fools, the lot of them, willing to sit here and starve to death because they liked the officer that gave the order. There were ten times the number of men as officers on this hulk, doing all the suffering and dying so the ones with the piping on their uniforms could cover themselves with glory, riches, and the gazes of women as they paraded through the town on shore leave.

Injustice.

Bunting brought his thoughts back to the men, still sharing a glance and not including him, even though he was part of their mess, taking an equal part in their lot, bent under the same damned thumb. They had been together here on the Indy and before, when he had not, and they had jokes he didn’t share. He dug viciously into the viscous glop which passed for dinner and counted the number of times the others shot a glance his way when they thought he wasn’t looking, conversation strained and unnatural.

And that too, was unjust, the effect of the officers splitting those that were willing to be sheep from those that would stand up for themselves. Hornblower’s influence, right there in the mess as sure as if he were sitting here among them, gangly limbs and intelligent quips that made an honest sturdy man feel two inches tall when he fastened those sharp eyes on you, measuring you and finding you lacking. His presence had no place in this mess, no right to stand between Bunting and the others, and Bunting would be damned if a cocked-up acting lieutenant would stand between him and what was rightfully his.

Because all that was Hornblower’s was rightfully his. He would subsist on half-rations no more.


End file.
